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“Bush Barrow: Bronze Age round barrow in Wiltshire, England, close to Stonehenge, which covered one of the richest burials of the Wessex culture. Dug into in 1808, the grave goods included some of the finest and richest examples of Bronze Age metalwork: sheet gold ornamental lozenges finely incised with bands of lines; a gold belt-hook similarly incised; daggers (Armorico-British type) including one with a hilt decorated by hammering into it numerous tiny gold pins. The grave goods also included a flanged axe, a polished stone macehead and ‘serrated’ bone mounts for a staff - often assumed to be a symbol of status of some kind. The staff mounts resemble grave goods recovered from Mycenae - though there are also parallels in gold objects found in Brittany - and have provoked continuing debates as to whether the Wessex elite responsible for Bush Barrow were in some sort of contact with the Mycenaean culture of the Mediterranean.”

“The later burial was certainly male, provided with weapons and apparently wearing gold-decorated clothing; ornaments with attachment-holes were found at his wrists and over his abdomen. This grave also contained an amber bead, and some bone objects that may be mounts for a staff and closely resemble a set found in Bush Barrow in Wiltshire.”

“spacer-beads of European types found among the amber beads in early contexts suggest that amber was largely imported in the form of made-up necklaces, the bone mounts from Shaft Grave I, paralleled in bone from Bush Barrow in Wessex and in gold from the Kerlagat grave in Brittany, probably represent another object, perhaps a staff, imported from Europe, since they have no local antecedents.”

“Professor Piggot has pointed out that the bone mounts of the Bush Barrow mace can be paralleled in very closely similar bone objects from Grave Circle B at Mycenae. This circle can be set earlier than Circle A, perhaps beginning c.1650 B.C. … Dr. David Clarke has recently suggested that Beaker decoration may provide a suitable prototype for the Bush Barrow mountings.”

“The zig-zag shaped bone or ivory mount discovered recently off the west Mediterranean coast on the Isleta del Campello nr. Alicante, Spain, with its close comparisons in the chevron-shaped Bush Barrow and Shaft Grave mounts, supports the traditional concept of a direct sea route across the Mediterranean rather than one by land along the Danube, the latter used since Early Neolithic times connecting northern Greece, Thrace and Anatolia with central Europe. Whereas the old short chronology’ held all of Wessex I to be contemporary with the Shaft Grave period, the new chronology places this correlation possibly still late in Wessex I, contemporary with its transition to II and with Wessex II, the later still producing amber spacer beads found in its Aldbourne series cremation graves (Gerloff 1975, 198ff). …

It is difficult to date the chevron-shaped bone or ivory mount from the Spanish coast near Alicante, because its find-circumstances have not been recorded. Brandherm (1996, 51) connects it with the northern province of the El Argar Culture. Its Mycenaean parallels come from Shaft Grave Iota, circle B, which contained pottery of Middle Helladic type and should mark the very beginning of the Shaft Grave series, presumably dating to the 17th century BC and probably slightly later than the comparable pieces from Bush Barrow with which they are traditionally connected (Gerloff 1975, 89; Harding 1984, 114 fig. 4). In common with the chevron-shaped gold-nail decoration of the Bush Barrow and related Breton dagger hafts, the Bush Barrow bone chevrons have third-millennium sheet-gold prototypes from Breton megalithic tombs (Gerloff 1975, 89; Eluère 1982, 41). The chevron design, already present in ‘Passage Grave Art’ (below, p.139f), occurs again on British Early Bronze Age beakers (Fig. 13.3) and Irish lunulae of the late third millennium. … Therefore, the unique Mycenaean mounts and their design, which have no contemporary local parallels or ancestry, could be derived from the west, whence they reached Greece presumably during the end of the Middle Helladic period and its transition to the Late, in – or possibly prior to – the 17th century BC. …

“During the late third millennium, after the demise of collective burial in tombs, Megalithic-style linear motifs – including chevrons and lozenges – reappeared in the earliest Bronze Age, when they are found on British long-necked beakers from single burials and are also characteristic of the most prestigious metalwork, namely Irish gold lunulae. These motifs – or better ‘symbols’ – continued into the time of the Wessex Culture, when they made their final appearance in the shape and decoration of the prestigious Bush Barrow and Clandon breastplates and the gold-nail inlay of the Bush Barrow hilt and its associated bone mounts. …

The survival of these motifs or symbols associated with burials, rituals and elites must indicate a continuation of some Megalithic traditions, beliefs and cult practices into the Early Bronze Age. Their sudden appearance at Mycenae together with other Atlantic elements of prestige (spacer beads, gold-nail decoration, sceptre mounts) must indicate a direct contact between these regions and it is feasible that some Atlantic ‘tin princes’ or merchants settled in the Mediterranean and contributed to the riches of the Shaft Grave period, possibly acting as distributors of Atlantic tin (and other commodities) to regions further east and adhering to some distant ‘Atlantic’ symbols of cult and prestige. It was shown that the contact finds between Wessex and Mycenae should have their prototypes and origin in the Atlantic West of the third and possibly even early fourth millennia BC. The design of the boring in the ‘basic pattern’ of Wessex and Mycenaean amber spacers (above, p.135–6) also has its ancestry in the Atlantic West, where it already occurs on late third-millennium beakers (Clarke’s 1970 motif 35ii; Butler 1963, 162ff.; Gerloff 1975, 219) as well as on lunulae (Taylor 1980, 38ff.). This supports the traditional belief that the Mycenaean spacers, known to be of Baltic amber, should have originated Britain. Apart from one – presumably imported – specimen off the west coast of Denmark, spacer beads with this particular style of boring, have no counterparts in Baltic lands. Baltic amber, however, is known to have been washed up along the eastern coast of Britain. Renfrew was justified, therefore, in postulating a ‘Wessex without Mycenae’, but had he proposed a ‘Mycenae without Wessex’ he would not have been.”

‘Reinecke’s ABC and the Chronology of the British Bronze Age’, Sabine Gerloff 2007.

"The Amesbury Archer is an early Bronze Age man whose grave was discovered during excavations in Amesbury near Stonehenge. The grave was uncovered in May 2002, and the man is believed to date from about 2300 BC. He is nicknamed "the Archer" because of the many arrowheads buried with him.[2] The grave contained more artefacts than any other British Bronze Age burial, including the earliest known gold objects ever found in England.

The Archer's grave yielded the greatest number of artefacts ever found in a Bronze Age burial in Britain. Among those discovered were: five funerary pots of the type associated with the Beaker culture; three tiny copper knives; sixteen barbed flint arrowheads; a kit of flint-knapping and metalworking tools, including cushion stones that functioned as a kind of portable anvil and that suggest he was a coppersmith; and some boar's tusks. On his forearm was a black stone wrist-guard. A similar red wrist-guard was by his knees. With the second wrist-guard was a shale belt ring and a pair of gold hair ornaments, the earliest gold objects ever found in England.[5] Research using oxygen isotope analysis in the Archer's tooth enamel has suggested that he originated from an alpine region of central Europe.

Btw, It loooks like I was wrong about Sardinians being closer to the 4 Mycenanean samples we have than modern Greeks. I guess the Myceneans were Eastern shifted enough to be closer to modern mainland Greeks.

But It does look like Sicilians/Southern Italians and various Jewish groups are.
@tauromenion
aka Sikiliot how come you never post here anymore. I miss you dude. This place is an Afrocentric site almost now. Come back.

I am part of the African diaspora too! Part Cape Verdean I actually logged back in to post in the CV thread.

But to answer your question it looks to me like Mycenaeans are closer to Sicilians, South Italians, Ashkenazim, and Aegean islanders, while being quite distant overall from mainland Greeks, whom have a lot of Slavic ancestry. With that said there is both some Slavic ancestry in the Aegean islands and some NW European in Sicilians which would theoretically pull them north, but then they have post-Neolithic West Asian that pulls them south, restoring their plotting with Mycenaeans.

I am part of the African diaspora too! Part Cape Verdean I actually logged back in to post in the CV thread.

But to answer your question it looks to me like Mycenaeans are closer to Sicilians, South Italians, Ashkenazim, and Aegean islanders, while being quite distant overall from mainland Greeks, whom have a lot of Slavic ancestry. With that said there is both some Slavic ancestry in the Aegean islands and some NW European in Sicilians which would theoretically pull them north, but then they have post-Neolithic West Asian that pulls them south, restoring their plotting with Mycenaeans.

The Crete_Armenoi sample from what I could tell looked very modern Greek like. It's basically a modern mainland Greek minus the ~3% Natufian like admixture the Greeks have inherited. Just look at the ADMIXTURE analysis from LAZ 2017.

I don't get why it's close to Portuguese, Spaniards and North Italians on your "single population sharing" cluster. Shouldnt it be closer to mainland Greeks and Southern Slavs?

And dude, you look White. What are you, 5% SSA or something? We've all seen your pictures. You look like you'r from the East Mediterranean.

The Crete_Armenoi sample from what I could tell looked very modern Greek like. It's basically a modern mainland Greek minus the ~3% Natufian like admixture the Greeks have inherited. Just look at the ADMIXTURE analysis from LAZ 2017.

I don't get why it's close to Portuguese, Spaniards and North Italians on your "single population sharing" cluster. Shouldnt it be closer to mainland Greeks and Southern Slavs?

And dude, you look White. What are you, 5% SSA or something? We've all seen your pictures. You look like you'r from the East Mediterranean.

The Crete_Armenoi sample does not make sense to me because even though it plots near modern mainland Greeks, it is the only ancient sample that does. We also know by IBD sharing that Greeks do have Slavic input, so I wonder whether this sample is representative or not. A new study on Crete came out which showed even Cretans have some Slavic input, which is odd to me because Cretans are autosomally quite hard to distinguish from Sicilians.

My hope is we end up with more Greek samples from between 500 BC to 1000 AD. That way we can see exactly when the northern shift came.

I was partially joking but I do identify with all of my roots including the Cape Verdean. One great-grandparent had Portuguese, as well as some African, ancestry -- Cape Verdeans overall have both (the island that my grandmother traces to is actually on average more Portuguese though as it had a limited number of enslaved Africans compared to some of the other islands).

But yes. I do look more Sicilian as you know, and could probably fit throughout most of West Asia without standing out. Probably mostly along the coast like Lebanon, coastal Syria, etc.

The Crete_Armenoi sample does not make sense to me because even though it plots near modern mainland Greeks, it is the only ancient sample that does. We also know by IBD sharing that Greeks do have Slavic input, so I wonder whether this sample is representative or not. A new study on Crete came out which showed even Cretans have some Slavic input, which is odd to me because Cretans are autosomally quite hard to distinguish from Sicilians.

My hope is we end up with more Greek samples from between 500 BC to 1000 AD. That way we can see exactly when the northern shift came.

I was partially joking but I do identify with all of my roots including the Cape Verdean. One great-grandparent had Portuguese, as well as some African, ancestry -- Cape Verdeans overall have both (the island that my grandmother traces to is actually on average more Portuguese though as it had a limited number of enslaved Africans compared to some of the other islands).

But yes. I do look more Sicilian as you know, and could probably fit throughout most of West Asia without standing out. Probably mostly along the coast like Lebanon, coastal Syria, etc.

Since the Dorians came from Epirus (what is now Southern Albania and modern NW Greece) my money is that they will have bloated steppe ancestry compared to the Mycenaean genomes we have right now. The Ionians may be more Mycenaean like, who knows. I agree, we can't measure Slavic genetic input into Greece until we have genomes from the post Doric migration. That Cretan sample may be an early Dorian.

I'm also curious what the ancient Cypriot Greeks genetically will be like. I'm guessing they'll have always had the some minor Natufian component and very little Steppe ancestry.